"Amazing tender and respectful care"

Anything else?

I wanted to write about the experience I had earlier this week. On Sunday evening, when I was 6 1/2 weeks pregnant I started to experience spotting and cramping. I rang 111 and was sent to the Haste Clinic. There I saw a frankly quite unpleasant doctor who just poked at my tummy and unceremonsiously and without the slightest care announced that I was probably miscarrying. To go home and someone from the early pregnancy unit would call in the morning. To say that I was absolutely floored was an understatement I felt devastated and like I was going to be sick. There was no kindness in the statement at all. Overnight the bleeding stopped, so I thought I was ok, but I still had quite a lot of pain in my tummy. I didn't hear from the EPU so in the end I rang them around 11am and they had the wrong details for me, and couldn't get through. The lady I spoke to on the phone was just so gentle and lovely and she immediately squeezed me in to see the doctor if I left home immediately. So I did, when my husband and I got in to see the doctor, he was very professional, very courteous and very kind, once he had scanned me he very gently and with an enormous amount of care and compassion in his voice told us that the baby had died. Both the doctor, the midwife on duty and the midwife that then took over our case went out of their way to help us in every single way they could. I also suffer from chronic pain all down my back and legs, and the gentleness, kindness, sympathy and care that we recieved from this oustanding team was second to none. They did everything in their power to help me to get a bed for that very afternoon to help me to have the procedure I needed, the evacuation, and midwife was absolutely incredible. The doctor also went out of his way to help us, and frankly I could not have been more grateful. When I went down to day surgery, the team there were also truly oustanding. I had to go in alone as my husband had to collect my other children, and when I was brought to my room the nurse was so gentle and kind, she could see the distress and pain I was in. The entire team of doctors, including the anaesthetists and the lovely Gynae/Obstetrics doctor that saw me were fantastic, and the nurses were truly fantastic. I cannot more highly recommend any of them, especially as I was feeling so destroyed and so raw, their sympathy, care and compassion was so desperately needed and they helped me through a truly awful day. A huge, huge, huge thank you to all of them from us.